On Sunday afternoon, the badly twisted wreckage of a Cessna 180 was still upside down on the freshly cut front lawn of a Brownville Road home just north of Schuylerville.

The front of the plane was crushed, its wheels and underbelly stuck into the air as though the plane crashed nose-first and then flipped over backward.

Federal investigators were just beginning their probe into the deadly Saturday evening crash that killed the two occupants, a local mechanic and an aerial photographer from Newburgh.

Jon Stomski, a 61-year-old Milton man, was riding as a passenger in the aircraft. According to friends and news archives, he worked as a mechanic both at his own shop and the nearby Albany Saratoga Speedway. Ciprian Ivascu, 33, who ran an aerial photography business, was piloting the plane.

A lieutenant with the Saratoga County Sheriff's office said the plane would be removed Sunday night. An agent from the Federal Aviation Administration accompanied sheriff's deputies at the scene Sunday, but did not speak with reporters.

Officials were waiting for an investigator from the National Transportation Safety Board — which handles crash investigations — to arrive and assess the site before removing the battered plane. The NTSB would only say Sunday that they were en route to investigate the crash. Pegging an exact cause will likely take months, officials said.

The plane was carrying a Saratoga Skydiving banner, but it is still unclear precisely how Stomski and Ivascu were affiliated with the company, which runs sky diving jumps that start at Heber Airpark, from which the ill-fated plane took off. The banner had been stuck in a tree Saturday, but was taken down by Sunday morning.

The plane crashed just after takeoff around 5:40 p.m. Saturday.

Nancy Rouse, on whose front lawn the plane crashed, said the Cessna clipped trees by her home after takeoff, flipped over and fell to the ground.

The airport's runway is less than 500 feet from where plane fell on Rouse's lawn.

Homes surround the runway on all sides. A golf course, Airway Meadows, is next door to the airport.

People at the scene Sunday said sky divers were making runs from the airport throughout the day.

"He just loved it," DelRegno said. "Every time he said he was going to go fly you could just see the excitement in his eyes."

Stomski was as passionate about mechanics as he was about flying, DelRegno and LaQue said. LaQue said Stomski let her son tinker in his shop when he was a boy, an initial exposure to working with cars that led LaQue's son to eventually earn an auto technician degree from Fulton-Montgomery Community College.

"He really influenced my son," LaQue said. "He was everyone's hero."

Stomski's brother, Lynn, died of cancer earlier this year, according to news archives, and worked as a mechanic at the Albany Saratoga Speedway as well.

Ivascu ran NYaerialshots.com, which takes photographs from helicopters around New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts, but is based in Newburgh, 90 miles south of Albany.

DelRegno said she spoke with Ivascu's wife Sunday. She said the couple recently married, and that, according to Ivascu's wife, the photographer had more than a decade of flying experience.

DelRegno said she did not know if Ivascu and Stomski were friends or how they had arranged to fly together Saturday.